Hi, guys,
I need to create a web app whose content could be adjusted in real time. To use an analogy - it should something like an airport’s departures and arrivals display.
For the web app, there should be a controller’s app (probably a desktop app) that would need to communicate with the web app.
The number of fields is static. I need to be able to just change the values in real time or close to it (1-2 sec delay).
Is this posible?
If the web app reads a file with the variable numbers, what would be the best way to update that file from a desktop app?
Should it create a fresh copy of the file with variables and FTP it to the server?
Thank you in advance for any suggestions.
Val
Put the variables in a database with a ChangedDate. Have a WebTimer run periodically for a changed ChangedDate, and update accordingly.
Short answer is yes, absolutely 
Can the controller app really be just another web page on the same web application? If it doesnt need to be a separate app but just another web page then it becomes much simpler. If the number of lines is fixed, and not too large, you can just make a controller page that has a text field for every entry, or whatever entries you need for them, that will immediately change the value for every other webpage whenever they are updated by the controller.
While you can certainly use a database if you wish, for something that sounds that straightforward and limited in scope I would suggest that while you could use a database it would be drastically overkill. You could write a json array to disk between runs so that it would save the current state, or if the lines are always in order then all you really need is a text file with one entry per line that you can very quickly read into the array holding the current values at startup and save back to disk when the controller updates his page.